E7/3 



iht freJcMiNAH^ Issue, 
btj VJ- G, Sum«o- 



1901 



W^ii:_„ 



V 



The Predominant Issue 



By W. G. Sumner, 
Yale University. 



Reprinted from 

THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY 

FOR NOVEMIJER, 1900. 

Burlington, Vermont, 
1 9 o 1 . 



£T7/3 



Copyright bj 
FREDERICK A. RICHARDSON, 
1901 



? 
f 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE 

Each of the two great parties in the present campaign is try- 
ing to force on the other a " predominant issue " to which the 
other will not agree. The predominant issue, not for a cam- 
paign or a year, is expansion and all that goes with it. It will 
not be settled by speeches or votes. It will have to work itself 
out in history. The political history of the United States for 
the next fifty years will date from the Spanish war of 1898. 
The attempt to absorb into the body politic of the United States 
communities of entirely foreign antecedents, nationality, religion, 
language, mores, political education, institutions, — in short, of 
a different culture and social education from ours, must be 
regarded as a far more serious venture than it is now popularlv 
supposed to be. Out of it will arise one question after another, 
and they- will be of a kind to produce political convulsions 
amongst us. The predominant issue, in a far wider sense than 
the wranglings of a presidential campaign, is how to let go of 
what we seized. No discussion such as occurs in a campaign 
ever clears up an issue; for one reason, because the discussion is 
carried on, not to get at the truth or wisdom of the case, but to 
win a party victory. It is an interesting study to notice how 
such a discussion results in set phrases and stereotyped assertions 
which bar the way to any real understanding of the issue. Let 
it be our object now to try to define the issue under expansion, 
imperialism, and militarism, which stands before the American 
people as the chief political interest of the immediate future. 

There are few of us who have not heard it said, after the fail- 
ure of a mercantile or manufacturing firm, that the cause of 
failure was that they had " spread out too much." The story is 
generally one of success within a field of effort, then of enthus- 
iasm and ambition overmastering prudence and moderation, then 
of excessive burdens and failure. On the other hand, we are 

(3) 



4 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

familiar enough with cases in which business enterprise and 
courage sustain enormous growth and expansion. It appears, 
therefore, that expansion, as such, is neither good nor bad. 
The question is one of conditions, circumstances, powers. It 
is a question of policy which must be decided by wisdom and 
prudence. It follows that it is never a question which can be 
settled by precedent. Every new case of expansion has its own 
circumstances. Enthusiasm would have no place in the plan, 
if it was to win the confidence of bankers and investors. Impa- 
tience of prudent foresight, and irritation at demands to see the 
grounds for expecting success, would not recommend the project 
to wise business men. Mere megalomania, — a desire to get a 
big thing to brag about, — would not be regarded as a good basis 
for the enterprise. 

At least two of our large cities have recently expanded their 
boundaries. A leading newspaper of Chicago has explained the 
financial distress of that city by the extent to which it has 
included unimproved suburbs.* The people of greater New 
York seem to have many doubts whether their expansion was 
wise and prudent. f No doubt both cities were chiefly influ- 
enced by megalomania, although it may very probably appear, 
after twentv-five years, in the case of New York, that it was well 
to secure the consolidation before greater difficulties accumu- 
lated in the way of it, and that the ultimate interest of all con- 
cerned was really served by it. 

If it is proposed to a railroad company to buy or lease another 
line, shall they not look to see whether it will be a burden or an 
advantage? To buy a lawsuit is not always an act of folly. 
John Jacob Astor did it with great profit, but he took care to 
get the best information and legal advice which could be obtained 
before he did it. 

Expansion, therefore, is not a disease, of which it can be said 
that it is always a calamity ; nor is it a growth of which it can be 
said that it is always an advantage. How can it be doubted that 
territorial expansion for a state presents the same kind of a prob- 

-* Chicago Tribune in the New York Times, Sept. 4, 1900. 

*f Comptroller's statements and newspaper comments thereon about Sept. 22, 
■iiOOO, 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 5 

lem, with similar danger of delusions, fallacies, and pitfalls of 
vanity? Expansion may lower national vitality and hasten 
decay. 

Any state or nation has life-necessities to meet as time goes 
on. It was a life-necessity of the German nation fifty years ago 
to form a unified state. The same was true of Italy. The cost 
was great, but it had to be met. The alternative was stagnation 
and decay. The Russians say that it is a life-necessity for them 
to get better access to the sea, but the case is by no means so 
clear. Probably the real philosophy of the American Revolu- 
tion is that it was a life-necessity of the Anglo-American col- 
onies to become independent. It mattered little, therefore, that 
the alleged reasons for the revolt, in history, law, and political 
philosophy, will not bear examination. 

This doctrine of life-necessity is dangerous. Unless it be 
handled with great caution and conscientiousness, and be 
checked by a close and positive adherence to facts, it may easily 
degenerate into the old " reason of state," and furnish an excuse 
for any political crime. It is a grand thing to soar over epochs 
and periods of history, deducing political generalizations and 
sweeping " laws of history," but it is futile and to be con- 
demned, unless it is done upon a basis of mature scholarship and 
with great reserve and care. Such deductions deserve no atten- 
tion unless they are restricted to simple phenomena and are 
above all suspicion of party interest. 

The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States was a clear 
and simple case of life-necessity. If Spain claimed that, as- 
possessor of New Orleans, she might of right close the Missis- 
sippi River, it was a life-necessity of the people of the United 
States to take New Orleans from her by purchase or war. Her 
views of public law and international rights and colonies then 
brought her into collision with us. The purchase of the whole 
western half of the valley was never contemplated by anybody 
here. It was proposed by France. If the purchase was wise, 
it was because the city could not be obtained otherwise, and we 
have a case which establishes the doctrine of " meeting the con- 
sequences " at the same time that it limits and defines it. The 
arguments of the Federalists against the purchase were all good 
(so far as they were not partisan), at that time, but the railroad 



6 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

and the telegraph took away all their force afterwards. Neither 
party could foresee the railroads or telegraphs. The purchase 
of Louisiana entailed the question of extending slavery, but the 
statesmen of 1S03, doing what our interests then required, could 
properly leave the consequences to be met when they arose, and 
they are not to be blamed if those consequences were unwisely 
met when they came. 

The acquisition of Florida was not in obedience to a state- 
necessity so clear and great as the acquisition of New Orleans, 
but Florida was geographically a part of our territory and Spain 
discharged her international duties with respect to it so badly 
that our relations with her were always bad. There was a great 
interest to acquire Florida, if it could be done by peaceful 
purchase. 

The acquisition of Texas and California was a very different 
matter. The two cases are generally conjoined, but they were 
very different and the whole story is one of those which a nation 
ignores in its own annals while vigorously denouncing similar 
episodes in the history of other states. The current argument 
now to justify what was then done is to point to Texas and the 
other states, to the harbor of San Francisco, the gold mines, and 
the Pacific Railroad, and to say that we should have had none 
of these but for what was done in 1S4S. This is as if a man 
who had stolen a fortune fifty years ago should justify himself 
by saying that he would not otherwise have had the land, 
houses, ships, stocks, etc., which he has had and enjoyed. 
Public and private property are not to be put on the same plane, 
and this comparison is only good for the particular point for 
which it is adduced, namely, that the pleasure and profit 
obtained from spoliation never can justify it. Nevertheless, 
there is some force in the doctrine of " manifest destiny." 
Manifest destiny is far more sound than the empty and silly talk 
of the last two years about "Destiny." Manifest destiny 
includes a rational judgment about the relations which now exist 
compared witn those which will probably arise in the future. 
" Destiny " has nothing rational in it. To invoke it in public 
affairs is a refusal to think, or to be governed by reason. 
Destiny is a name for the connection which unites the series of 
consequences upon an act like the war with Spain, and it is 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 7 

invoked to prevent us from going back to see whether the con- 
sequences do not prove that that act was wrong and foolish. 

There was room to argue, in 1845, that it was the plain 
course of the future that the United States should occupy and 
develop California. It was a contiguous territory. It lay between 
the United States and the Pacific and contained the best harbor 
on the coast. It was in hands which were not developing it. 
It was almost uninhabited, so that the subjugation of dissatisfied 
people, although not entirely absent, was not an important fact. 
The claim of a group of people to hold a part of the earth's sur- 
face is never absolute. Every group holds its territory by force, 
and holds it subject to the obligation to exploit it and make it 
contributory to the welfare of mankind. If it does not do this 
it will probably loose the territory by the conquest of a more 
energetic people. This is manifest destiny. It is another 
dangerous doctrine, if it is used without a candid heed to its 
limitations. It has been abused twice recentlv : — first, an abso- 
lute right to territory has been set up on behalf of the Boers, 
who really challenged the English as to the manifest destiny of 
South Africa; second, in our own relations with Spain we 
have heard arguments that, if one state thinks that another is not 
making good use of its territory, the former may dispossess the 
latter. In so far, then, as state-necessity in the weaker form of 
manifest destiny may be judged to apply to California that case 
of expansion could be justified. 

If now we turn to our recent expansion and apply the doctrine 
of state-necessity to it, there might be some argument in favor 
of the acquisition of Cuba. It is contiguous to our territory and 
there is a slight but unimportant military advantage in owning 
it. No necessity for owning it was ever experienced ; that is to 
say, no conviction that we needed it was ever forced upon us 
by experience of loss, disadvantage, injury, or incapacity of any 
kind, from not possessing it, as in the case of the Mississippi 
River. The American people were indifferent to it up to 1S9S. 
We had no grievance against Spain. No folly or wrong which 
she had committed had reached us, as in the case of Florida. 
Yet it was with reference to Cuba that we went to war with 
her, and we have bound ourselves to make Cuba independent ; 
that is, to put her out of our jurisdiction, and sacrifice any inter- 



8 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

est which we have in possessing the island. It is as safe as any 
political prediction can be that we shall never again give up the 
jurisdiction over Cuba. Our national vanity is at stake in it 
now, and there is some rational ground for holding it. 

As to Porto Rico and the Philippines the great ground for 
dissent from what has been done is that action did not proceed 
from any rational motive connected with the growth and rami- 
fications of the interests of the American people. The action 
was gratuitous and adventurous. While it was not called for by 
any care for our interests it involved us in risks and obligations. 
A new doctrine of constructive obligation has been invented 
which is false and dangerous. A prominent newspaper recently 
argued that we are bound to protect the Chinese Christian con- 
verts because we allowed missionaries to be sent to China under 
our protection. This is but a specimen of the way in which 
false dogmas grow when statesmen begin to act from motives 
which are entirely foreign to statecraft. The arguments in 
favor of expansion all have the character of after-thoughts 
invented to excuse or defend acts which were resolved upon for 
other reasons. At the present moment perhaps not a single voter 
wants the United States to acquire a part of China. Why not? 
If any one was asked, he probably would say that it is out of our 
way, that it would involve us in trouble, that it is not necessary 
for our interests, that it would be foolish, since it would show a 
lack of judgment as to when a thing is wise and when it is not. 
If any voter had been asked on January i, 1S9S, whether he de- 
sired that the United States should acquire the Philippine Islands, 
would he not have made the same reply, with impatient scorn 
that any one should bother him with such a senseless proposi- 
tion? How did the battle of Manila Bay alter any factor which 
entered into the wisdom of acquiring the Philippines as a ques- 
tion of rational statesmanship? If that battle had never taken 
place, and the Philippine islanders had continued their revolu- 
tion until they drove out the Spaniards, what would Americans 
have cared what government they set up, or how they got along 
with it ? Why should we care now, even if a naval battle 
between us and the Spaniards did take place in Manila Bay? 
No one is so foolish as to really believe in these constructive obli- 
gations, if there were no other elements in the case, but the 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 9 

national vanity is now enlisted, and vanity leads nations into 
follv just as it does individuals. 

Upon a positive analysis, therefore, the case of recent expan- 
sion is shown to be different from all the earlier cases which are 
cited to justify it precisely in the most essential fact, the interest 
of the American people as the efficient motive. 

All expansion includes the question whether we shall treat the 
inhabitants of new possessions as we treat each other, or on 
some inferior footing; whether we shall govern them by our 
will or let them share in governing themselves and us. This 
dilemma is insoluble, undei our system of government. We 
shall struggle with it through the next generation, and it will 
force a change in our system of government. This is why the 
present expansion, taking in elements which are foreign and 
uncongenial, is no parallel to cases of expansion into uninhab- 
ited territory. The inhabitants of the new possessions have 
interests, ideas, tastes, wills, and unless we kill them all, their 
human traits will enter into the problem. If we take them into 
full fellowship, imagine what the " Spanish Gang" will be and 
do in Congress within twenty years ! It would be madness to 
put our interests into such jeopardy, and it would be fatal to 
the political system under which we have lived to take that 
course. The other branch of the dilemma is imperialism and it 
is no less fatal to our political system. 

Specifically, it is imperialism for the Congress of the United 
States to rule any people who are outside of the United States, 
and not under the guarantees of the Constitution of the United 
States. Congress owes its existence to the Constitution which 
defines the rights and duties of Congress. Congress has no 
existence or authority outside of the sway and the restrictions of 
the political system to which that document gives order, nor 
outside of the commonwealth of which that document prescribes 
the structure and functions. The answer which is made to this 
statement is that the United States is a sovereign state, like any 
other state, and with all the powers which any state of the first 
rank has. That is imperialism, for it disregards the historical 
and legal facts about the Constitution of the United States, and 
the novel and unique political system created under it, in order 
to go ofF and find a basis of interpretation for the American 






10 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

Federal Commonwealth in the precedents and analogies of the 
Roman Empire and the modern European military monarchies. 
Here is an issue which is sharp enough. Here is something 
which may properly be called "Americanism"; namelv, the 
novel and unique political system under which we have lived 
and loyalty to the same, and the issue is nothing less than whether 
to go on and maintain it or to discard it for the European mili- 
tary and monarchial tradition. It must be a complete trans- 
formation of the former to try to carry on under it two groups of 
political societies, one on a higher, the other on a lower plane, 
unequal in rights and powers; the former, in their confederated 
capacity, ruling the latter perhaps by military force. 

Then again, imperialism is a philosophy. It is the way of 
looking at things which is congenial to people who are ruling 
others without constitutional restraints, and it is the temper in 
which they act. History offers plenty of examples of it and the 
most striking ones are furnished by democracies and republics. 
The Greek cities with their colonies and dependent allies, the 
Roman republic, the Italian city republics, showed what tyranny 
one commonwealth is capable of when it rules another. We 
showed it ourselves in the reconstruction period. You cannot 
get a governing state to listen, think, repent, confess, and 
reform. It is more vain than a despot. Is it not a "free" 
government? Can "we" be tyrants or do any wrong? 
Already we have had ample manifestations of this temper 
amongst ourselves. We have juggled away so much of our 
sacred political dogmas as troubles us, although we cling to 
such as we can still make use of. We fret and chafe now at 
the " Constitution," of which, two years ago, we made a fetish. 
We fly into a rage at anybody who dissents and call him "rebel" 
and "traitor," as strikers shout "scab" at any one who 
chooses to hold an opinion of his own. It is one of the worst 
symptoms of change that the American sense of humor, which 
has, in the past, done such good service in suppressing political 
asininity, now makes default. If it was still efficient we should 
not hear of " traitors " who choose to vote no, or of "rebels" 
who never owed allegiance, or of the doctrine that those who 
oppose a war are responsible for the lives lost in it, or that a 
citizen may criticize any action of his government except a war. 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 11 

The evil of imperialism is in its reaction on our own national 
character and institutions, on our political ideas and creed, on our 
way of managing our public affairs, on our temper in political 
discussion. 

Imperialism is one way of dealing with the problem forced 
upon us by expansion to embrace uncongenial groups of people. 
Militarism is a method of carrying out that policy. McKinley 
will not wear a crown, and Congress will not introduce univer- 
sal military service, next winter. Derision of such fears is 
cheap, since nobody entertains them. In this world it is the 
little beginnings which tell ; it is the first steps at the parting of 
the ways which are decisive. Militarism is a system. It may 
go with a small armament, or be absent with a large one, as in 
England. It is militarism when a European king always wears 
a militarv uniform. It represents an idea. The predominant idea 
in the state is (perhaps necessarily) its military strength, and 
the king, as the representative of the state, keeps this ever before 
himself and others. This is a way of looking at state affairs, 
and it colors everything else. Therefore it is militarism when 
military officers despise civilians and call them "pekins," law- 
yers, grocers, philistines, etc. ; when they never go about without 
sabres by their sides ; when they push civilians off the sidewalk 
and cut their heads open with the sabre if they remonstrate. It 
is militarism when railroads are built as military strategy 
requires; not as trade requires. Militarism and industrialism 
are two standpoints which are widely separated, from which 
the modern state has two very different aspects, and from which 
almost every question of policy will have two different presump- 
tions to start with. Under militarism the foremost question is: 
Will it increase our power to fight? Under industrialism it is: 
Will it increase the comfort of our people ? Of every new 
invention militarism asks: How can it be rendered useful for 
military purposes? Industrialism asks: How will it increase 
our power over nature to supply our needs? Militarism is also 
a philosophv and temper which is accordant with imperialism. It 
consists in aggression and domination instead of conciliation and 
concession. It is militarism to " jam things through " without 
consideration for the feelings and interests of other people, except 
so far as they can strike back, whether it is done in a legislature 



"•^E3P*T"rt. ~J. W. HBP»Wpwpiw»w^:^i 



12 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

or on the field of battle. Militarism is pugnacity, preference for 
fighting methods, faith in violence, strenuosity, ruthlessness, 
cynical selfishness as far as one dare indulge it. It is entirely 
opposed to the American temper which has been developed by 
industrialism, and which does not believe in fighting methods, 
although it recognizes the fact that men must fight sometimes, 
and that when the occasion comes they ought to fight with all 
their might. Militarism means one law for ourselves and 
another for everybody else; the great dogmas of the Declaration 
of Independence were good when we wanted to be independent 
of somebody else ; they have no validity when somebody else 
wants to be independent of us. Aguinaldo was a patriot when 
he was fighting Spain ; he is a rebel when he is fighting us. 
Militarism is the neglect of rational motives and interests and the 
surrender of one's mind and will to whimsical points of vanity 
and anger. 

We have advanced far on this road when we propose to sit in 
judgment on the fitness of other people for self-government. 
What are the criteria of this fitness? Who knows whether we 
possess it ourselves? Any nation possesses it onlv more or less. 
The legislature of New York apparently does not think that the 
city of New York possesses it. In the period of 1783 to 17S9 
many- contemporary observers saw good reason to doubt whether 
the United States of North America possessed it, and even dis- 
tinguished fathers of the republic have left on record their own 
misgivings about it. Thirty years ago we gave the suffrage to 
newly emancipated negro slaves, and gave them not onlv self- 
government but the political control of the states in which they 
lived. It was the gravest political heresy of that period to doubt 
if they were " fit for self-government," and no question of that 
sort was ever formulated in public discussion. There is some- 
thing ludicrous in the attitude of one community standing over 
another to see whether the latter is "fit tor self-government." 
Is lynching, or race-rioting, or negro-burning, or a row in the 
legislature, or a strike with paralyzed industry, or a disputed 
election, or a legislative deadlock, or the murder of a claimant- 
official, or cotinting-in unelected officers, or factiousness, or 
financial corruption and jobbery, proof of unfitness for self-gov- 
ernment? If so, any state which was stronger than we might 



THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 13 

take away our self-government on the ground that we were 
unfit for it. It is, therefore, simply a question of power, like 
all the other alleged grounds of interference of one political 
body with another, such as humanity, sympathy, neighborhood, 
internal anarchy, etc., etc. We talk as if we were going to 
adjudicate the fitness of another body politic for self-government, 
as a free, open, and categorical question, when to decide it one 
way means that we shall surrender power, and when not even 
flagrant civil war could really be held to prove unfitness. 

It does not improve the matter any to speak of a "stable gov- 
ernment." A leading newspaper recently said that the thing to 
do is to establish "what may properly be regarded by us rather 
than Cuba as a stable government." This is the attitude of 
imperialism and militarism, and the issue involved between 
those of us who approve of it and those who do not is whether 
the American people ought, in their own interest, to engage in 
this kind of an enterprise with respect to anybody. All govern- 
ments perish. None, therefore, are stable beyond more or less. 
What degree of duration suffices? There is no issue which is 
capable of adjudication. There is no political issue between the 
parties in respect to their policy. Both use the same phrase. 
Mr. Bryan would be as slow to wound the national vanity as 
Mr. McKinley. The patronage and power in the dependencies 
are as dear to his followers as to Mr. McKinley's. 

There is an issue, however, and the chief difficulty connected 
with it is that it is too deep and philosophical for easy popular 
discussion. It is nothing less than the standpoint, the philos- 
ophy, and the temper of our political system ; that is to say, 
it is the integrity of our political system. Every step we take 
brings up new experiences which warn us that we are 
on a wrong path. The irritation and impatience of the 
expansionists testify to their own uneasiness at what we are 
doing. It is not to be expected that any appeal to reason can 
guide the course of events. Experience of trouble, war, expense, 
corruption, quarrels, scandals, etc., etc., may produce weari- 
ness and anger and determine action. The issue will, therefore, 
press upon us for years to come. 

The expansionists ask what we think ought to be done. It is 
they who are in power, and have our fate in their hands, and it 



• ■» 



14 THE PREDOMINANT ISSUE. 

belongs to them to say what shall be done. This they have not 
done. They are contented with optimistic platitudes which 
cany no responsibility, and can be dropped to-morrow as easily 
as "criminal aggression" and our " plain duty." It is unques- 
tionably true that there is no fighting against the accomplished 
fact, although it is rare audacity to taunt the victims of misgov- 
ernment with their own powerlessness against it, as if that was 
an excuse for it. We were told that we needed Hawaii in order 
to secure California. What shall we now take in order to 
secure the Philippines? No wonder that some expansionists do 
not w r ant to " scuttle out of China." We shall need to take 
China, Japan, and the East Indies (according to the doctrine) in 
order to " secure" what we have. Of course, this means that, 
on the doctrine, we must take the whole earth in order to be 
safe on any part of it, and the fallacy stands exposed. If, then, 
safety and prosperity do not lie in this direction, the place to 
look for them is in the other direction ; in domestic develop- 
ment, peace, industry, free trade with everybody, low taxes, 
industrial power. We ought not only to grant independence to 
these communities, which are both geographically and socially 
outside of us, but we ought to force it upon them as soon as a 
reasonable time has been granted to them to organize such a 
political system as suits them. After that, they should go on 
their own way on their own responsibility, and we should turn 
our attention to our own interests, and the development of our 
own country, on those lines of political policy which our tradi- 
tions set for us, and of which our experience has been so 
satisfactory. 



The International Monthly 

Contents : 

JANUARY. 

England at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, Emit Reich 

Mountain Structure and Its Origin, - James Geikie 
The X-Rays in Medicine, - Francis H. Williams, M. D. 
The Puelic Library in the United States: 

Some Recent Phases and Tendencies, - Herbert Putnam 

The English People: Notes on National Characteristics, Bernard Bosanquet 



FEBRUARY. 

American Interests in the Orient, 
Nietzsche and Darwinism, - 
Auguste Rodin: His Decorative Sculpture, - 
The Real Ibsen, ------ 

Mountain Structure and Its Origin (concluded), 



Charles S. Conant 

Alfred Fouill'ei 

CamUle Mauclair 

11 illiam Archer 

"James Geikie 



SOME CONTRIBUTORS TO THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY: 



Edouard Rod 
N. S. Shaler 
Charles De Kay 
John Trowbridge 
W. J. Stillman 
C. H. Toy 
W. W. Ireland 
Patrick Geddes 
W. P. Trent 
E. P. Clark 
L. M. Keasbey 
Brander Matthews 
H. T. Finck ■ 
E. L. Zalinski 
Oliver J. Lodge 
R W. Wilcox 
John R. Procter 
Russell Sturgis 
Harold Jacoby 



Wm. Lindsay 
Edmund Buckley 
Frank J. Goodnow 
Th. Ribot 

William Morton Payne 
J. H. Robinson 
Edmund B. Wilson 
Cyrus Edton 
E. B. Titchener 
Theodor Barth 
Alfred Rambaud 
Adna F. Weber 
Andrew C. Lawson 
George F. Hoar 
Booker T. Washington 
A. L. Frothingham, Jr. 
L. Marillier 
A. D. Morse 
John La Farge 



Franklin H. Giddings 
W. G. Sumner 
Paul H. Hanus 
William B. Scott 
Josiah Royce 
Dana C. Munro 
Hans Prutz 
Gustav Lanson 
Edmund Goss 
William Archer 
Kuno Francke 
Will H. Low 
Bishop Potter 
F. B. Jevons 
Alfred Fouillee 
J. Novicow 
Oswald Kulpe 
James Sully 
Geo. F. Stout 



James Geikie 
Warren Upham 
T. H. Morgan 
Edw. B. Poulton 
Carl von Noorden 
Photino Panas 

C. Guy 

F. H. Williams 

F. Marion Crawford 

Herbert Putnam 

D. B. St. John Roosa 
Bernard Bosanquet 

E. Charlton Black 
Albert Bushnell Hart. 
Camille Mauclair 
Charles S. Conant 



THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY 



$4 a Year. 



BURLINGTON, VT. 



Single Number, 35c 



The Expansion of Russia: 

Problems of the East and 
Problems of the Far East 

By ALFRED RAMBAUD 

Senator of France. Member of the Institute. 

CLOTH, 12 mo. $1.00 POSTPAID. 

A most useful and interesting handbook on the subject of Russian Expansion 
and the Eastern and Far Eastern questions, printed from type on heavy paper and 
neatly and attractively bound. 

"THE EXPANSION OF RUSSIA" is more than an academical treatise 
upon the influence of Russia on the Chinese question : it is a history of the progress 
of Russia. Opening with a chapter on the origin of the Russian race and nation, the 
entire history of the foreign relations of that great empire is rapidly and interestingly 
reviewed. 

In the less than too pages will be found sketched the evolution of Russian nationality, its sub- 
jection to the Mongols, its revival after their withdrawal, the advance into Western Europe, the 
struggles for domination in the Balkans, the advance into Western Asia, the settlement of Siberia, 
encroachment upon the Persian and Indian frontiers, and finally the interference with Japan and the 
beginnings of the present upheaval in China. The translation from the French has preserved all the 
vivacity of the original. As a reference book, a book equally of instruction and pleasure, " I he 
Expansion of Russia," will meet the every expectation of readers who do not care for a volumi- 
nous history, or for the internal policies, palace intrigues, and factional wars of a foreign nation. 

"As M. Rambaud's ' Histoire de Russie,' crowned by the French Academy in 
1883, has been regarded as perhaps the most authoritative history of Russia, a new 
work by the distinguished writer should find wide welcome. The welcome may be all 
the wider since the book is a small one. The essay reviews Russian history from the 
beginning to the present time, and is a well condensed account. It will be of moment, 
not only to the general reader, but also to the student of politics and history, because 
of its discussion of Russian expansion since 1883, in the direction of the Pacific and 
of the Persian Gulf, and also because of the author's clever differentiation of Russia 
from Great Britain — her greatest rival in Asia — in origin, constitution, and assimila- 
tive power." — The Outlook. 

PUBLISHED B7 

THE INTERNATIONAL MONTHLY,^ 

BURLINGTON, VERMONT. 



